In this world, there are no easy cases

Editor's note: This story contains graphic descriptions that may not be suitable for children and might be disturbing for some readers.

Lynnette Hedblom was packing the car for a late-summer trip to the cabin when she saw a stocky Asian girl sitting on the curb at the foot of her Roseville driveway. It was after midnight, and the girl was disoriented, talking to herself. She stood to leave, but staggered.

Hedblom watched, worried that the girl would stumble into traffic on Lexington Avenue. The girl took a few steps, then slumped back to the curb.

Hedblom, a reserve officer with the Roseville Police Department, assumed she was drunk. In the dim light, she couldn't see the blood matted on the girl's burgundy jeans.

Hedblom asked her if she needed to call someone for a ride. "And that's when she told me she had actually run away," Hedblom said later. "I wanted to know why she was having a hard time walking. ... And that's when she told me that after she had run away, she had encountered these people the night before ... that had gang-raped her."

When Hedblom started to call the police, the girl objected. She believed that once word of the assaults got out in her community, she would be considered unworthy of marriage.

The story illustrates the enormous hurdles facing investigators and prosecutors trying to prosecute the rapes of young Hmong girls.

Even when rape victims cooperate, as this girl eventually did, it can be hard to win a conviction.

Many delay reporting the crime until it's too late to gather good evidence. Victims who drank alcohol or used illegal drugs before the attacks undermine their credibility with some jurors.

Investigators and prosecutors say those issues, common to many rape cases, are magnified when the victims are Hmong. They tend to be younger than most other rape victims. They often fall prey to gang members who get them high or drunk and threaten them with weapons. They seldom know the attackers' real names. And, like this girl, they sometimes are attacked by so many men that they become confused and can't clearly remember faces.

If the 12-year-old hadn't gotten lost as she tried to make her way home from St. Paul, the crime might have gone undetected altogether.

Cultural hurdles

Hedblom called the police over the girl's objections.

It's not surprising to those who work on Hmong rape cases that the girl would be reluctant to bring charges. Federal studies show that most rape victims -- more than six out of 10 -- don't report the crime. Hmong victims are even less likely to do so because of the culture's strong clan system and stigmatization of rape victims, according to a 2000 study commissioned by the Minnesota Legislature.

One reason is fear. "If there isn't a conviction, these gang members are going to be after her, and who's going to protect her? Not the county attorney. Not the police," said Tru Thao, a Ramsey County social worker who works with truants and runaways.

And girls can't count on the Hmong community to take their side.

Hmong have a highly patriarchal society. Girls who lose their virginity outside of marriage are devalued; the community scorns them and their families unless the girl marries the rapist. By contrast, some families and clans will rally to protect the males accused of rape or paying for child prostitutes.

"That's one of the main problems," said Richard Dusterhoft, an assistant Ramsey County attorney who has prosecuted these cases for several years. "My experience has been that support, from family, the community, friends, etc., has been one-sided in favor of defendants."

Witnesses, fearing retaliation and pressure from clans, sometimes change their stories when it's time to testify, Dusterhoft said.

Hmong enclaves exist around the country, but in the 1990s, Ramsey County became the ethnic group's leading population center. It is home to nearly 60 percent of the state's Hmong population.

Kevin Navara, a Hmong gang expert with the Minnesota Gang Strike Force, said witnesses and defendants alike sometimes disappear into California, Wisconsin, Michigan or the Carolinas. And victims often will deny that an attack took place or refuse to cooperate with investigators, he said.

That can spoil any chance of trying a suspect, said Chris Wilton, a former Ramsey County prosecutor who has handled a number of Hmong gang-rape cases.

"If the girl simply says, 'It didn't happen and I'm not going to talk about it,' then you're essentially all done with that," said Wilton, now an assistant U.S. attorney.

Gathering evidence

In the case of the 12-year-old girl found in Roseville, her physical condition was evidence of the abuse. She told a Roseville police officer that when her attackers held her down during the rapes, it felt like they were breaking her bones.

She was taken to Regions Hospital in St. Paul, then to Midwest Children's Resource Center, a division of Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota.

Pediatric nurse practitioner Laurel Edinburgh interviewed her and photographed the bruises on her arms, wrists and legs.

Edinburgh swabbed for semen because it could provide the DNA needed to identify the attackers, but the cotton swab filled with blood, she said. More than 40 hours after the assault, the girl was still bleeding.

Edinburgh found no semen on the girl, possibly because it had washed out, but the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension found some in her pants. An expert said it came from more than one person.

For the DNA to mean anything, though, investigators would need to match it to a suspect. Like many young Hmong rape victims, the girl didn't know the names of her attackers and was uncertain where the assaults happened.

She told police she thought it was somewhere in St. Paul, because she remembered seeing the city's name on a manhole cover after she finally broke away and began walking home.

St. Paul police officer Michael Barabas tried to interview her. The girl described three attackers but said there were more. Barabas said she was incoherent. "She couldn't explain what happened to her in a sequence of events," he said. "She had real difficulty."

Eventually, the girl offered one clue: a phone number for a teen who had helped her run away. She knew him only by his nickname, "Johnny." Police traced the number to Yaug Haag Thao, now 19.

Unreliable witnesses

Thao told police that he had taken the girl to a party in St. Paul's Frogtown neighborhood where members of at least two Hmong gangs were drinking.

His assistance eventually helped police track down other witnesses and defendants. But over time, his story became filled with contradictions and lapses that later helped the defense. Dusterhoft said such discrepancies are common in Hmong rape cases when the cooperating witness must face the accused in court.

The girl had barely turned 13 when she testified against two men in the first trial. She entered the courtroom with her arms folded across her chest and hurried past the defendants, her eyes cast downward to avoid their hard stares.

At times, she spoke so softly the judge had to remind her to speak up.

She admitted to getting drunk at the party. Authorities say gang members often get girls drunk or give them drugs before raping them.

The party grew loud and the host, Bee Yang, known as Billy, kicked everyone out. He asked a gang member named Lee Teng Lor, now 22, to take the girl home.

Lor said the girl didn't want to go home, so he followed the party to a vacant house near Battle Creek Park that belonged to the family of Blong Xiong, 22. The girl said she felt sick and needed to sleep, so Lor led her to a bedroom. There was no furniture, so she lay down on the floor.

Thao also had followed the party that night. He told police he heard noises coming from the room and went to investigate. He said he watched Lor and several other men have sex with the girl, who was struggling and begging them to stop. Thao said he asked if he could join in, but they refused.

Without Thao, police might have been stymied. The girl didn't know Lor's name. She only remembered that it began with S, that he was short, and that he drove a white pickup.

Lor's name doesn't begin with S, but gang members usually have nicknames. When police questioned Lor, he initially denied knowing about the rapes. But when asked his nickname, Lor held up his hand. Stubby, he said, because he has short fingers.

Two days before his trial was to begin in April 2004, Lor cut a deal. He pleaded guilty to rape and to committing a crime for the benefit of a gang. In exchange for testifying truthfully against other defendants, prosecutors agreed to cap his potential prison sentence.

At trial, Dusterhoft leaned heavily on Lor's testimony. Without informants, he said, it's hard to bring charges in such cases. But jurors may discount an informant who has something to gain by testifying. "No one likes a snitch," Dusterhoft said.

Conflicting stories

Blong Xiong and a co-defendant, Bee Chue Chang, now 21, of St. Paul, were the first to go on trial.

In many ways, it typified Hmong rape trials, Dusterhoft said. A prosecution witness refused to testify when he was called. On the witness stand, Thao continually contradicted his own testimony about who and what he had seen. He said he saw Chang in the bedroom when the girl was being raped. But when Chang's lawyer, Gary Bryant-Wolf, asked Thao if Chang looked the same then as he did that day in court, Thao said he didn't know; he couldn't remember.

Pressed harder, Thao said he didn't really see Chang in the bedroom that night.

Bryant-Wolf, seeking to drive home the point, asked him again. "You didn't see him, did you?"

"Yes," Thao responded.

"OK. So far, we've heard yes, no and I don't know," Bryant-Wolf said. He asked the question once again.

Thao responded that he had forgotten much of what happened that night. Jurors in Minnesota courts can't consider a witness' statements to police as evidence. The statements can only be used to impeach the credibility of witnesses.

Dusterhoft said later that such twists are common when Hmong witnesses face defendants in court. "Some of the perpetrators can be related to some of the victims or to the witnesses, and so there's some pressure ... when it comes to testifying," Dusterhoft said.

Thao's memory hadn't improved by April, when a third defendant, Cha Xiong, now 22, went on trial for aiding and abetting the rape. Cha Xiong's lawyer, Mark Todd, prepared the jurors for Thao in his opening statement by asking rhetorically what he would say about his client. Then he answered his own question: "That is going to be hard to predict because he has said so many things already."

Bee Yang, another gang member, also flip-flopped. Sensing the lawyers' growing frustration, Yang volunteered: "For some reason, I always say yes. I don't know why."

Dusterhoft threw up his hands in exasperation and briefly slumped over a table. Moments later, after District Judge Edward Cleary released the jurors for the afternoon recess, Cha Xiong's attorney said sympathetically to Dusterhoft: "He just says yes to everything. What the heck!"

Vulnerable victims

The victim is potentially the best witness in a rape case. But in these cases, the victims are so young and fragile that prosecutors try to avoid having them testify. In this case, Dusterhoft noted, the victim was just 12, had been drinking, and faded in and out of consciousness as strangers raped her in the dark.

After the assaults, the girl picked out a picture of Bee Chue Chang and said he had assaulted her. But in the picture he had longer hair, dyed reddish-orange. About a year later, at the trial, he had black hair cropped military style. She failed to identify him in person.

She did recognize co-defendant Blong Xiong, known as "Biggie," as someone who had been at the house where she was raped. In court, though, she didn't accuse him of assaulting her.

The girl's testimony highlighted uncertainties in the case. It's not unusual for young victims to make mistakes or to forget details of a crime, especially when they were intoxicated and when they fear being disowned by their families, Dusterhoft said.

In this case, the girl said the attacks started after she had gone to sleep and awoke naked in the dark, with Lor on top of her. She said she struggled, "then I somehow went unconscious."

Some other men and teens at the party piled into the room to rape her. When she came around and resisted, someone would cover her face so she would gasp for air, Lor testified.

"She was screaming," Lor said. "You could say she was trying to get away."

At the first trial, the girl said about five men had intercourse with her and 10 to 15 forced her to perform oral sex. She acknowledged that she wasn't certain of the total.

Making sense of it

"She was not the best reporter of that assault because people were coming in as the assault commences," Dusterhoft told jurors at the first trial. "She wasn't paying attention to their faces."

Jurors had to decide that case with little more than DNA evidence implicating Blong Xiong, the testimony of Lor -- who had cut a deal -- and the girl's confused testimony.

The girl, now 15, appeared more confident in the second trial. She entered the room with her head up, wearing a green and white Michigan sweatshirt and dramatic hoop earrings. She spoke clearly and looked jurors in the eye. But jurors in the trial of Cha Xiong had no DNA evidence to rely on. "There is no physical evidence linking Mr. Xiong to this assault," his attorney said flatly.

In the end, Blong Xiong was the only one of the three defendants to be convicted. Jurors found him guilty of rape and of committing the crime for the benefit of a gang. He insisted he was innocent. Judge Paulette Flynn sentenced him to 13 years in prison.

Lor's plea bargain netted him a sentence of eight years and two months, but it was suspended for his 20 years of probation; he was credited for the year he had already served in jail, fined $1,000, must register as a sex offender and have no contact with gang members.

After Cha Xiong's acquittal in April, Dusterhoft, exasperated, dropped charges against the two remaining defendants, Que Lee, 23, known as "Dracky," and Sia Vang, 20, known as "Tiny."

Asked why, Dusterhoft wrote in an e-mail: "Cha Xiong got acquitted and he admitted being in the room. Bee Chue Chang got acquitted."

Lee, he said, pleaded guilty in a separate case to perjury for the benefit of a gang by falsifying his visa application. In exchange, Dusterhoft dismissed the sex assault charge. Under a plea agreement, he was given five years' probation and could be sent to prison for 2½ years if he messes up. If he stays clean, the case will later appear as a misdemeanor rather than a felony.

Dusterhoft took solace in the fact that Vang faced charges in an unrelated sexual assault, along with two other defendants. He pleaded guilty in that case in a deal that calls for the dismissal of the assault charges in this one. The deal calls for a sentence of just over eight years in prison.

"I don't dismiss any felony lightly," Dusterhoft said. "In light of the jury verdicts, I can't justify putting the victim on the stand again to talk about the terrible things that happened to her when the chances of success are marginal."

The writers can be reached at dbrowning@startribune.com and plouwagie@startribune.com.